Mission Buniyaad- A dream came true

        The National Achievement Survey 2017 data released by NCERT in February 2018 showed that students of classes 3, 5 and 8 are much below the grade-appropriate level. Further, Delhi Government’s Chunauti 2018 program has shown that students joining Class 6 of its schools have very low foundational learning skills. In 2016, while only 25% of students who joined Class 6 in DoE schools could read their textbook, it barely changed to 32% in 2017 and again to 29% in 2018. Nearly 90% of the students in Class 6 of DoE schools come from Municipal and low-cost private schools. Thus, not only a big push is required in primary grades to strengthen the foundational learning skills of students but a sustained effort is required to bridge the learning deficit in upper primary grades as well.      

        At the beginning of the academic year 2018-19 Government of NCT Delhi launched a 3-month long campaign “Mission Buniyaad” to ensure all students of classes 3 to 9 in the schools operated by Directorate of Education and local bodies, as the case may be, learn to read grade-appropriate texts and solve basic maths operations.         

     While all participating entities i.e. Directorate of Education and local bodies shared the common goal of the campaign (with DoE providing technical inputs), the operational strategies were designed by each agency independent of each other.

         Out of the total 8,10,136 students from classes 3^rd to 9^th tracked, 4,21,861 constituted the target group for grade-appropriate reading in Hindi/Urdu and 3,73,345 for building basic proficiency in Maths.

             The Story for students in Classes 3 to 5 is about 8-10 lines text of the difficulty level in primary class textbooks. This has been used as a proxy for the grade-level reading ability for classes 3 to 5.

             The text for the Advance Story level in the Hindi reading assessment the tool is a paragraph from the social science textbook of Std 6. The difficulty level of this text is similar to the ones in the textbooks of Hindi medium in upper primary and secondary textbooks. Hence, Advance story is used as a proxy for grade-appropriate text

The campaign was run in two phases:

Phase –I:  from 02.04.2018 to 10.05.2018  during regular school timings

Phase-II: from 11.05.2018 to 30.06.2018 as Summer Camp during summer vacation for 3 hours daily. 

              All the students  from classes 3 to 6 and target group students from 7 to 9 were enrolled in this phase . As there was no dedicated  separate Scheme/ Budget Head to meet the  expenditure on refreshment @ Rs 30/- per participant and for Miscellaneous item, the  expenditure was incurred from  GSS –OE( V) 2202  02 109 96 00 13  after due approval from FD.

The key activities of this campaign were:

·     Daily 2-3 hours of Hindi/Urdu reading writing and maths activities.

· Teachers and other officers were trained to apply appropriate pedagogy based on the existing        learning level of the students.

·   Training of SMC members was undertaken to ensure the active participation of SMCs in the campaign.

·   Special child wise learning material was developed by SCERT Delhi for the campaign and distributed to all students.

·   Mega Parent Teachers meeting, Parental workshops, and Radio campaign was launched to convince the parents to stay back during summer break and send their children to school regularly.

Assessment: 

The assessment was done as per the following schedule, 

Pre Campaign:  last week of February 2018

Mid Assessment: 9^th May 2018 to 11^th May 2018

Post Assessment: 26^th June 2018 to 30^th June 2018

Monthly Assessment on the last two working days of every month  for students of Neo Nishtha /Nishtha group

Final Assessment of all students from classes 3^rd to 8^th in the month of December 2018 to prepare a plan for the next academic session. 

                     To retain the momentum and give a decisive push to transform the learning profile of each of these classes, Delhi Government decided to extend the Mission Buniyaad for one more months up to 31.07.2018. During this period, students were given lots of writing practice like short essay, letter writing, story writing, etc. In Maths, the students were encouraged to create and solve word problems involving subtraction, multiplication, and divisions of higher numbers to ensure that all children reach the irreversible level as far as foundational learning is concerned.  Zone wise data of final Assessment for classes 6^th to 8^th (in the subjects of Hindi and Maths) as on 31^st July  has been  prepared and Inspections of individual schools for monitoring the progress under Mission Buniyaad were conducted.

                      In order to monitor the progress of students who were still below advanced story in Hindi and Division Level in maths, IEP (Individual Education Plan)  were prepared at HOS level with the help of EVGC, Special Education teacher and TDC and the teachers were requested to adopt these children.  Monthly assessment of these students was done on the two last days of every month to monitor the progress of students.

                     Zone the wise report was prepared to identify the Zones/ Schools needing more support and the same was strengthened through Mentor teachers/ TDCs. 

                     After the completion of the three-month long Campaign from 2^nd April 2018 to 30^th June 2018, and continued Post Mission Buniyaad activities, the Percentage of Students who can read grade-appropriate text / solve basic Maths operations has increased. In order to prepare a suitable plan for next Academic Session  for improving the learning skills of students of classes III – VIII, Assessment of all Students from classes 3^rd to 8^th  has been completed on 31.12.2018.

Outcome of Mission Buniyaad program

The  number  of tracked  students who can read a story  in Hindi in classes 3^rd to 5^th has increased from 34225 (48.3%) in Baseline Assessment (April 2018) to 55570 (71.76%) in the Final assessment (December 2018). In classes 6^th to 8^th the number of students who can read Advanced  story  in Hindi  has increased from 238928 (43.7%) in Baseline (April 2018) to 398498 (64.68%) in  Final assessment (December 2018). A total of 454068 students have  been benefitted by the program.

The  number  of tracked  students at Division Level in Maths in classes 3^rd to 5^th has increased from 21482 (30.3%) in Baseline (April 2018) to 49863 (64.37%) in  Final assessment (December 2018). In classes 6^th to 8^th the number of students at Division Level in Maths has increased from 285501(52.3%) in Baseline (April 2018) to 459348 (74.57%) in Final Assessment (December 2018). A total of 509211 students have been benefitted by the program.

For class 9^th, at the end of three month long Campaign, the number of tracked students at Advanced Story in Hindi increased from 117200 (58.7%) to 140348 (70.3%) and those at Division Level in Mathematics increased from 131760 (66.0%) to 158940 (79.7%).